December 14 - Obama Will Not Veto the Assault on the Bill of Rights; The Real Reason the Post Office is Going Broke; "Can the World Live With A Near-Nuclear Iran?"

We begin with Shahid Buttar, the executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee to discuss the contents of the Defense Authorization bill the President had threatened to veto but now appears willing to sign into law. We examine provisions in the bill the Pentagon and the FBI opposed which the White House now accepts and determine how much they pose a threat to the civil liberties of Americans exercising their constitutional rights under the first, fifth and sixth amendments.

Then, with the announcement of a moratorium on the planned closure of more post offices and 250 mail processing plants that would eliminate 28,000 more jobs, we discuss the real reason the Postal Service is in financial difficulty, as opposed to the often-stated misreporting by the mainstream press that the Internet is putting the post office out of business. The president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Fredric Rolando joins us to lay out the reasons why the same Congress now calling for a plan to save the Postal Service, is responsible for shackling it with a uniquely onerous pre-funded health and retirement fund that has billions in surplus.

Then finally we examine an alternative approach to the growing confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. Mohammed Ayoob, the University Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University joins us to discuss why Iran wants a nuclear weapon and how best to deal with them once they have it. He has an article at CNN “Can the World Live With a Near-Nuclear Iran”.